The 2016 election featured former friends Donald J. Trump and Hilary R. Clinton as political adversaries. The second presidential election for millennials, the excitement the election engendered seems minimal in comparison to the pending ballots of 2020. This year has proved an eye-opening entry point into the next decade, with the upcoming election as illuminating a pseudo gateway to change.

Change is not in the vote itself, but what the vote demands. Considering the overt anti-blackness exuded by both parties, many have opted to sit this election out. This choice does not reflect passivity; rather, it works as a protest to political stagnancy. While abstaining from voting will not abolish white supremacy, it is hard to critique those whose simply do not wish to participate in what has always been a racist ptactice. It is even harder to employ the argument that “you’re allowing someone to vote for you” in considering the electoral college’s role in selecting the president. Neverthess, it remains impossible to prove victorious in a battle where one refuses to fight. Despite the frustration of being black in America, it is imperative that we discover and implement new ways to fight for what we collectively deserve.

Dr. Boyce Watkins made a very important statement earlier this week when he stated that he wouldn’t de-friend any black person for their political choices. On this, I implement the same ideology. However, opening up a series of critical dialogues about choice, culture, and politics, ensures the choices we make are in fact choices and not chosen for us by those who work diligently to shape our truth. So while I will encourage everyone to feel how they feel, please allow your voting choice to reflect contemplation rather than sentiment.

It is, however, sentiment that drove both Biden and Trump, two white male senior-citizens to the presidency. Biden, like Trump, reflects the white male plight to reseize the throne from the black man who honed the presidency for eight years. Both Trump and Biden illuminate those who should have sat this one out, those who should have developed new leaders. Instead, they reflect the hegemonically induced insecurity of those who must maintain a hate-filled hierarchy at all costs.

Both Biden and Trump delineate those who have legally disenfranchised the black community for decades; Biden, who has made a career from said disenfranchisement culminates his hegemonic evil with the 1994 Crime Bill. The crime bill is especially important to consider given Biden’s most recent comments about the police. In an upcoming interview with Good Morning America, Biden says that we need more police and a “national standard” of police conduct. His comments sound a lot like a preamble for a new law or “policing bill” that will undoubtedly have the most prevalent effects on the black community. Nevertheless, the 94’ bill in isolation, delineates enough reason not to vote for Biden, but with that said, no black person should vote for Donald Trump.

Before I go into why no black person should vote for Donald Trump, please allow me to state that he is, in many ways, the best president we ever had. My statement, however, does not suggest that Donald Trump was or is a good president. Rather, my contention credits Donald Trump with exposing president as the derogatory term it is and exposing white supremacy as a toxic praxis and ideology with the capacity to harm large masses of people. These truths, however, do not undermine his act in 1989. Yes, I am referring to the Central Park 5 advertisement that Trump sponsored. The Ad called for the state of New York to reinstate the death penalty. Let me remind you that the Central Park 5 were children. Thus, Trump’s attack on black youth constitutes a call for genocide.

This is unforgivable.

A vote for Trump is a vote for black genocide, and this is not necessarily untrue for Joe Biden with the crime bill that legalized a war on black men and subsequently black families. The 1994 crime bill constituted population control which subtly inflicted genocide onto the black community. The 13th amendment profits slavery “except as a punishment for a crime” So, just as Michelle Alexander depicts in The New Jim Crow, “crime” is a political play to legitimize contemporary enslavement of black people.

Thus, to consider the genocidal motives that lie at the root of each candidate), it becomes evident that the death and subjugation of black people function as inevitabilities to each party. Pro-life and Pro-choice are commonly associated with women’s rights, yet they personify options simply not legally available to Africans in America. Specifically, the black collective only has the pro-choice option; choose how you would like your disenfranchisement administered.

The choice appears to be: how would you like the government to kill your children? How would you like an anti-black world to annihilate your existence? Whereas the choice should be: how can blacks assume a social and political position where they are not encouraged to vote for what does not, and has never, benefitted them? How can the black agenda be mandatory, and not just a suggestion? How can we remove black genocide from the core of this nation’s existence?

The genocidal intent that informs both parties denounces the phrase “the lesser of two evils” that rolls of the tongue of far too many within the black collective these days. There is no such thing as the lesser of two evils when you are a black person in America. Evil is evil, and in America, evil is legal.